Some of Ted Cruz’ More Bizarre Claims

ThinkProgress offers a brief list of some of the truly bizarre claims Ted Cruz has made. I was going to say beliefs he has, but I doubt he actually believes them. He’s just pandering and fear-mongering, playing to the kind of people who really do believe such things because they tend to be Republican primary voters.

George Soros leads a global conspiracy to abolish the game of golf. In a January 2012 article published on Cruz’s senate campaign website, the future senator argues that a twenty year-old non-binding United Nations resolution signed by 178 nations including the United States under President George H.W. Bush, is actually a nefarious plot to “abolish ‘unsustainable’ environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads.” Cruz attributes this plot to a common tea party boogieman — “[t]he originator of this grand scheme is George Soros, who candidly supports socialism and believes that global development must progress through eliminating national sovereignty and private property.”

Communists infiltrated Harvard Law School. Almost three years ago, Cruz gave a speech to the tea party group Americans for Prosperity in which he claimed that revolutionary communists were a major presence on Harvard’s law faculty. According to Cruz, “There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they wereMarxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.” Cruz’s claims came as a big surprise to Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried, a Republican who served as President Reagan’s solicitor general, who says that “I would be surprised if there were any members of the faculty who ‘believed in the Communists overthrowing the U.S. government.’”

It’s also worth noting that the fact check sites have found that most claims he makes that they look into are false. Out of 44 such claims, only one was rated as true. Seven were rated as mostly true and seven more as half-true. 29 of them were rated mostly false, false or pants on fire lies.

In the not that bizarre but still wrong, in the speech announcing his campaign Cruz said roughly half of born again US Christians don’t vote in presidential elections; the GSS suggests that it would be closer to a quarter.

tbp1

If it were up to me, I’d certainly outlaw golf courses in many places in the country. The outlay in water is absolutely indefensible in lots of locales, not to mention the inevitable environmental pollution caused by the pesticides and other chemicals required. Likewise, I’m sure there are places grazing pastures are a really, really bad idea.

This is not spam and I do not actually support Ted Cruz. Just a bit of fun.

lofgren

I was impressed that he actually mentioned abolishing the IRS in his announcement. I expected he would save that tidbit for less scrutinized speeches. There’s a proposal that’s going to last right up until some gotcha journalist asks, “So, how would that work, exactly?”

R Johnston

Ted Cruz is the son and disciple of a christian dominionist rabidly anti-communist minister who raised him from birth to believe the things that Cruz claims to believe.

Cruz almost certainly actually believes the latter two of your three examples, and I wouldn’t bet against him believing the first.

Freedonian

@ mkoormtbaalt – The Cruz team doesn’t seem to understand this interwebs thing. The connection on TedCruzforAmerica.com is even better!

R Johnston

TedCruz.com was registered by someone else of the same name who happens to be an avid Democrat well before Ted Cruz first ran for public office. The site isn’t an example of the Cruz team not understanding the internet. The site isn’t being squatted, was never available for the Cruz team to register, and it’s owner is sincere in his strong opposition to Ted Cruz, so unless they want to throw a whole lot of money at a political opponent, there’s not much the Cruz campaign could do about it.

raven

Cruz said roughly half of born again US Christians don

raven

Well shoot. That one was FTB’s fault.

Cruz said roughly half of born again US Christians don’t vote in presidential elections; the GSS suggests that it would be closer to a quarter.

A lot of nonborn again xians and nonxians don’t vote either.

Fundies only make up 26% of the US population. They aren’t even a majority of US xians, maybe a third.

And 20% of fundies voted for…Obama. I guess every tribe has its eccentrics.

raven

Ted Cruz is the son and disciple of a christian dominionist rabidly anti-communist minister who raised him from birth to believe the things that Cruz claims to believe.

While true, that still doesn’t say much good about Ted Cruz.

Most of us were raised from birth as xians, including myself. I got almost two decades of standard indoctrination.

It sort of took. But it morphed into tolerance and social justice xianity. And died when I collided with the fundies and actually read the bible.

You need three things to succeed. Taxes at least 10% of GDP, a strong central government, and rule of law AKA a level playing field to keep the oligarchies at bay.

2. OTOH, the way the USA is going, that might end up being a good idea. Nothing like an angry giant staggering around with no brains and almost half the world’s nuclear weapons. Looking for a country to start another war with.

3, I’m only half serious here. When countries collapse it is usually pretty ugly. Look what happened to Yugoslavia, the Roman empire, or the Soviet empire.

Average lifespans fell sharply when the USSR fell apart and they are still trying to get a post-Soviet civilization up and running.

briandavis

lofgren said:

I was impressed that he actually mentioned abolishing the IRS in his announcement. I expected he would save that tidbit for less scrutinized speeches. There’s a proposal that’s going to last right up until some gotcha journalist asks, “So, how would that work, exactly?”

Abolishing the IRS will be easy. We’ll just create a new Department of Freedom Funding. It will be totally different and better because reasons.

blf

Abolishing the IRA would be the end of the USA.

What has the IRA got to do with USA? Ok, yes, the Provos were, and the Drones are, terrorists…

(Yes, I realize IRS was meant…)

raven

40% of the US budget is Social Security and Medicare, both self supporting programs.

If you abolished the IRS, those two programs would die. And they are wildly popular among most older Americans, especially the Cruz voter demographic of weird, old white people of modest education and income.

Oh well, that would be my billion dollar fortune. If they do that, my new company will deliver free food, blue tarps, and blankets to the masses of old people living in our parks.

dmcclean

Abolishing the IRS will be easy. We’ll just create a new Department of Freedom Funding. It will be totally different and better because reasons.

Just like we did with INS ICE. And it’s better because the name is cooler.

R Johnston

raven @10:

Absolutely it says nothing good about Cruz. It only says that it’s a mistake to assume that Cruz doesn’t believe the things he claims to believe. While it’s normal to grow out of such beliefs, it’s also normal not to, and there’s no hint in the record of Cruz ever having deviated from the kinds of beliefs he’s professing to believe.

Cruz may be pandering and trying to bilk his supporters, and his precise motives for running for President at this time may not be known, but that doesn’t change the facts that he believes he’s on a mission from god and he sees communists and violent opposition to his brand of christianity in every corner, hidden or otherwise.

http://www.pandasthumb.org Area Man

The abolish the IRS bit is of course not unique to Cruz, but has always been on the fringes of right-wing polemics. It’s an unserious idea that persists purely for symbolic purposes and to express inchoate hatred of the Tax Man, not because there exists a reasonable case that it’s possible to generate tax revenue without enforcement. For a presidential aspirant to entertain the idea marks him as completely unfit to govern.

http://www.aquaticape.org anthrosciguy

…and actually read the bible.

BIG mistake. That one trips up a lot of fundamentalists, from what I’ve read.

D. C. Sessions

The abolish the IRS bit is of course not unique to Cruz, but has always been on the fringes of right-wing polemics. It’s an unserious idea that persists purely for symbolic purposes and to express inchoate hatred of the Tax Man

Or perhaps to move the Overton Window.

militantagnostic

Cruz is justified in fearing a Sharia Law takeover, since it happened to his home town of Calgary when a Muslim was elected mayor. Naheed Nenshi walked in the gay pride parade wearing a shirt that said “Straight but not narrow”. You can’t get more fundamentalist than that.

http://www.gregory-gadow.net Gregory in Seattle

I’ve been wondering. The full, legal name for the junior senator from Texas is Rafael Edward Cruz. Where does Ted come from? And is it legal for him to run for public office under an alias and not his legal name?

eamick

@21: Ted is a common nickname for Edward. You may have heard of some obscure pol from Massachusetts named something like Kennedy whose first name was Edward. As for the second point, people list themselves by all sorts of bizarre names on ballots all the time; the idea that someone couldn’t use the name they use in everyday life is a bit much.

D. C. Sessions

Look up the legal names of Mitt Romney and JEB Bush, to name two recent examples.